This was the question I got from a recent client of mine which as they said it it kind of made me laugh. Because it’s kind of like asking how effective is toothpaste I getting rid of bad breath or plaque. Or how effective is Gatorade every fueling you when you’re dehydrated. Sure there are other things that are effective.
But quite honestly the one thing that I think that is extremely effective for anxiety is hypnosis and I’m going to share with you why in a moment. But mind you I’m a clinical therapist and have been in the year in the field for over 10 years. And have not seen anything as effective for anxiety treatment as hypnosis. Which sounds like a bold statement but trust me medication cognitive behavior therapy yoga meditation none of those approaches work as effectively as hypnosis and it’s because of this one reason.
Anxiety is a trance.
Just think about it. A trance is basically anything that absorbs your attention and get you to hallucinate or imagine something fake is real.
And I’m not saying by any means that your anxiety is imagining the fake. But I am saying that your perception of the stressors is what’s making the anxiety worse..
Hypnosis works by helping you to understand what is triggering it and then getting you to reprocess and neutralize that triggering a event. So that you are no longer anxious.
To give you a quick metaphor about it. Let’s say for instance you’re afraid of talking to your boss.
Everyday you wake up from work and you find yourself dreading to go to work because you have to have a difficult conversation with him or her. As soon as you wake up and get out of bed your heart starts beating fast you start sweating you get this flood of thoughts coming at you from all different directions.
You basically paralyzed and you’re soon on the verge of having a panic attack. What’s happening here is your subconscious mind has interpreted dealing with your boss as a life or death situation so it’s responding accordingly.
It’s responding the same way you would respond if you saw a line on there it’s losing its freaking mind in order to keep you alive. Add that to the fact that despite having this anxiety response in you you’re still going to meet your boss.
So your body is treating it as if you saw the bear and you’re still going up to shake his head despite you seeing blood coming out of his teeth because he’s eating some other human. There is nothing you can cognitively do in order to get rid of this irrational fear. No amount of identifying negative thoughts is going to help here.
No amount of medication is going to help you cuz all the medication is doing is suppressing the adrenaline system. But that isn’t the answer because all the bodies going to do is try to give you a stronger reaction in order to get you to take action. The only real answer here is beginning to believe and feel that that triggering event is harmless. To do it that one way is by using hypnosis.
Which is why despite being trained in several approaches. I continue to rely on hypnosis it’s just more effective at getting your subconscious mind to neutralize that threat and helping you to become confident again. Now your next question maybe we’ll just work for me. And I would like to think yes but I’m not sure. So I was just asking that you reach out to me and explain to me the type of anxiety you deal with and I’ll provide you with some information on whether or not it would work for you.